Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The People United

Bayonets cannot weave cloth.~ Joseph Etter, IWW labor organizer commenting on the Massachussetts governor's decision to send in the National Guard to crush a strike by textile workers.

It has been interesting watching the conglomerate-owned media covering the revolution in Egypt. It has also been interesting hearing the Obama administration telling one of the many corrupt lackeys of U.S. foreign policy to not crush the will of the people over there, while the war against the peasantry intensifies on U.S. soil. The union busting threats made by governors of New Jersey and Wisconsin are similar to those of 100 years ago. We are stuck in a reactionary time warp.

Both Republicans and Democrats seem to be on the same side lately. Perhaps this is due to the racheting up of the campaign finance corruption enabled by the judicial activism of five ultra-right members of the Supreme Court. In order to play the candidate game, you now have to be able to raise vast sums of money AND not incur the wrath of those who can raise vast sums of money against you. All this leads to policies that will support the very top of the economic pyramid at the expense of everyone else.

It doesn't take a lot of predictive power to see that this will end badly if a radical change of course does not occur. The attack on the public workforce and unions, along with environmental and safety regulations, the continued reliance on fossil fuels, the neglect to educational and physical infrastructure...all of these things will have negative consequences, many of them dire, to everyone. The least powerful will, as always, be most negatively impacted. It won't stop there, however. Those in charge seem determined to find the limits of popular revolution in this country. At some point, the left-right divide will have to be bridged and the recognition of the common enemy must occur. The appropriation of "not gonna take it anymore" by right-wing corporate stooges will seem rather quaint compared to when the shit actually hits the fan. I hope our government follows its own advice to foreign countries when it happens here.

6 comments:

Without unions, and the number has shrunk over the years with the public sector's losses more gradual than the private sector's, which has been virtually decimated, Corporations will return to the glory days when the whole nation kowtowed to their demands.

It's practically that way now, without the unions, but, with unions out of the picture corporations will finally have what they want--total control over the government, over workers, and over every aspect of their daily operations.

"In order to play the candidate game, you now have to be able to raise vast sums of money AND not incur the wrath of those who can raise vast sums of money against you."

I've heard that legislators give 80% of their time to raising money, and only 20% to the people's business.

A business couldn't sustain itself with such a breakdown, but our government is run this way.

Small wonder, then, that government is mismanaged, and the real "of the people" are those whopay the freight, lobbyists.

"[T]he left-right divide will have to be bridged and the recognition of the common enemy must occur."

Let's hope that the moment of enlightenment will come while there's still something to salvage.

At the rate with which the erosion is now occurring (our rights, and our power), we may be forced to start over, but if that happens blood will be spilled, and corporate-backed armies will be the ones spilling it.

Didn't I hear Gov. Walker threaten the use of the National Guard against union protesters?

Are we not hearing that the Koch brothers are behind this union-busting movement in this country?

Are we not hearing that this is all part of a Republican strategy to weaken the Democrat party leading up to a sweep of the presidency and both houses of congress?

BD...It's funny how the corporate media is spending more time on what's going on in Egypt and countries half way around the world, but they are trying to ignore what's going on in Wisconsin. That hits a little too close to home it seems. They won't be able to ignore it much longer because the fuse has been lit and bigger explosions could be on the way.

The Republicans are once again overplaying their hand, given to them by about 20 percent of the electorate in a mid-term election. But the Democrats have been neutered by the supremely Felonious Five in their Citizens United decision.

What John Roberts et al did last year was similar to what Roger Taney did in the Dred Scott decision of 1857. They set the stage for a great war. The sad part is we are not fighting to move forward, but to keep from being set backward.

Sorry P, democracy wins. The Republicans in Wisconsin lost their budget quorum thanks to the recall election that defeated the incumbent. This means the attack on unions funded by the Kochs and others has been rejected by the voters.

BD...I am well and thanks for asking. Just been watching and occasionally participating in the current movement to end corporate domination of government in the past few months. I didn't see adding anything to the last post since things were finally unfolding on these shores and the media was behaving in a perfectly predictable way. I will be posting some comments on various topics soon.